A rare case of a t-shirt actually paid for, but worth it.

I got this one at a Breeders/Afghan Whigs concert in Dayton, Ohio way back in 1994.  It was a hometown show for The Breeders, and the Afghan Whigs, being from Cincinnati, had been to the venue as kids to see shows, too.

This was all before Kelly Deal had her little FedEx problem, and the band fell apart.  Too bad, Last Splash is one of my favorite albums, very eclectic, but with a lot of cool songs on it.

The really stupid part is, I thought the photo on the shirt and album cover was a strawberry, and I’m not sure I figured it out for the first five years I had the thing.  Speaking of which, it’s cherry season here in NorCal, and I need to hit a farmer’s market ASAP!  Is there a better month of the year then Cherry Time?

That was not a rhetorical question, slackass, and I expect your full pro or con thesis in the comments section or emailed to me by 9pm tonight

Today’s blog is rated ‘R’, absolutely no one under 17 admitted without parent.

Once again, I have broken out some vintage KWOD gear for tonight’s Death Cab For Cutie show, just in case I happen to be in front of a large group of people at some point.  This is our spring marketing budget, actually.

I’ve always liked this shirt, since we first got them back in 2003 & 2004.  It’s a simple design, says the name of the radio station, plus mentions that we are Sacramento’s Original Alternative, which is true, even if the Nickleback station is playing Weezer and Gnarls Barkley songs.

The only problem with the shirt is that even though the font is very compelling, this type of script is difficult, nay, impossible to read from a distance of more than six feet.  Which makes me wonder about the practice of having tattoos in this font inked in huge letters across your back.

Since it can’t be read from any real distance, and it’s on your back, the only logical use for putting a tattoo of this sort there is so that your cellmate will know who he’s a$$-raping.  Think of it as a tramp stamp for men.

Spring is here, baseball is underway, but it’s also time for spring workouts:

I was born in and grew up in Ohio, and spent Saturday afternoons in the fall with Dad watching the Buckeyes on television.  Great times, and definitely one of the few things that’s better in the Midwest than here in NorCal.  College sports!  No one gives a crap about them around here, for the most part.  Stanford and Cal have some decent teams now and then, but for football, Pig Bowl is probably the biggest event for 100 miles in any direction.

But for true rivalry, you have to look to The Game, Ohio State vs Michigan.  Home or away, it’s 105,000 mental patients packed into a stadium, a venue that could still be filled if it was five times as large.  Year in and year out, it is the only game that matters, and even a bad season takes on beauty when your team wins.

Of course, the Buckeyes have reeled off five straight wins over the fruitily attired team from up north, so I’m not absolutely certain it’s even a rivalry any more.

So, go Buckeyes!  And as we like to say, Ann Arbor is a whore’s name.

Ahh, this one takes me back:

When I was living back East in the 90s, we did a couple of shows with Letters To Cleo, including a New Year’s Eve show with them and Dillon Fence.  Everyone in the band was very cool, especially Kay Hanley, who is super-pleasant when she drinks.

Now, back then, I had long hair, which my wife braided up with colored rubber bands, in a style I can only describe as “Coolio Albino.”  I was dressed in a sheet modified to look like a diaper, and I was doing stage announcements as a hideous Baby New Year.  The truly disturbing thing about this is that I know for a fact that there are photos documenting this atrocity, although I haven’t seen them in years, as they were on my old station’s website.

But they are out there someplace, and will no doubt come back to bite me on the ass one day if I ever consider running for the US Senate.

Special note to Governor Schwarzenegger: Senators Feinstein and Boxer are old as hell.  If one of them retires and moves to Tampa, I would make a great replacement Senator.  I have seen many of your movies, and think Kazaam would have been a lot better with you as the genie instead of Shaquille O’Neal.   I promise not to mention that you wear lifts in your shoes, either.

True story.

One of my all-time favorites popped up in the rotation this morning:

This one arrived in January 2002, the same month this X-Ecutioners cd came out.  The X-Ecutioners are turntablists from New York, and are one of the few groups still making actual hip-hop.  They’re featured prominently in the 2001 film, Scratch, which is easily the most ass-kicking documentary on the music since Wild Style back in’82.  West Coast guys like Q-Bert and Sacramento’s Mix Master Mike and DJ Shadow are also profiled in the movie.  There is a whole lot of ridiculous deck work going on, and I’d definitely recommend having a look at the less commercial and far more talented side of hip-hop.

I also like the color of this shirt very much.

I’m so grateful that there is no tax on free t-shirts:

I like this one, it’s a cool color, and Blur’s logo is simple and pleasing to the eye.  Wow, I really don’t have much to say about this one.

Oh, wait!  I saw Blur in a small club in 1997 or 1998, and they were phenomenal on stage.  Tons of energy, just real rock stars in the best and most entertaining sense.  The place was packed, which meant about 600 people stuffed in there, and they closed with “Song 2.”

Now, something happened in the crowd while the song was on, while everyone was jumping around and screaming, and it was lewd and astounding.  Even on the internet, I can’t get into it.

What a lame way to end the blog today, I am terribly sorry.

Today’s shirt comes all the way from Japan, by unconventional methods:

My friend Seena went to Japan last year to visit family, see stuff, and to compete in a worldwide Dance Dance Revolution death match.  I’m assuming that since she came back, she must have won, which is no surprise.   I asked her to take a lot of photos while she was there, since I’ve never been to Japan, and I will probably never go due to my debilitating Godzilla-phobia.  Even that Geico gekko makes me clench up a little bit.

So, she had a great time, and when she returned, in addition to lots of cool photos, she brought me this t-shirt.  Seena claims that it is the Japanese equivalent to “WTF?!” and since she has never lied to me, I believe her.

This is not a face that would tell an untruth.  Still, whenever I go to a sushi restaurant, someone always throws scalding hot tea on me.  Probably a coincidence.

This shirt has never failed to get at least one positive comment:

This is the promo t-shirt for Alien vs Predator (or “AVP” as it’s known among dorks).  Every time I wear this, someone remarks how cool it is, and I never argue, mostly because it’s weird that someone would run up to you screaming “AWESOME SHIRT, DUDE!”

I saw the first two Alien movies, and the original Predator flick.  I enjoyed them!  The Alien movies just scared the hell out of you, and Predator was just awesome because you have a movie with Apollo Creed and two future state governors in the jungle being hunted by a space alien with dreadlocks.

There’s also this hilarious moment when Apollo and Kindergarten Cop first meet, and they shake hands.  It’s one of the few documented incidents of the “bicep porn” genre ever to make a mainstream film.

Roid-tacular!

Predator was a lot of fun, but Alien was not fun at all.  These movies made me tense for two hours, but in the best possible sense.  Sigourney Weaver starred, and even with a shaved head, was still super-hot.  For example, getting into her spacesuit:

Here she is in Galaxy Quest:

What the hell was I talking about?

Wait, I didn’t know you were a dork.

Yep, an X-Files shirt.  I’m assuming that I acquired this one in the 90s, although I’m not sure whether it was promoting the TV show, or that crappy movie they made.  I enjoyed the show, to be honest, but I wasn’t fixated on it like a lot of fans.  I remember talking with people, and they were arguing about the finer points and discrepancies in the plot lines, and would yell, “YOU’RE TREKKIES!”

I started watching the show as a result of dead batteries in the cable remote.  I was home on a Sunday night watching a show called “The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr.”  Does anyone besides me remember this?  Bruce Campbell was in it, and it was a western set in the 1890s, but there was also a lot of weird science-fictiony stuff, so it was just an hour of silly fun.

Brisco County ends, the remote doesn’t work, and this weird show comes on about a liver-eating mutant that comes out of hibernation to kill humans every 30 years.  So, I’m good.

I watched the show pretty regularly for most of the run, but I preferred the episodes that were one-off, as opposed to the ongoing giant conspiracy thread that ran throughout the series.  Those were good episodes, too, I just didn’t have any desire to spend extra effort to try and unravel a TV mystery.  It’s not just laziness, but that’s a lot of it.

The important thing is that if someone got me the entire series on DVD, I would watch it.

Sure free t-shirts are great, but there is a downside to everything, and last weekend, tragedy struck.

A broken stick.  What the hell has this got to do with free t-shirts?

Only everything.

For years, I have been taking shirts home, washing them, wearing them, an endless cycle of laundering and re-insertion into the lineup via a simple wooden bar hung in my closet.  Well, Friday night, in a much more believable way than Jennifer Lopez ever could, the wooden bar said “ENOUGH!”

The damned thing broke from the sheer weight of all of my t-shirts.

I was forced to make some tough decisions, and I weeded a few out, then headed to Home Depot on Sunday to get a new bar.  I had considered getting a metal one, given the pathetic strength of wood, and carbon fiber seemed to make the most sense.  It then occurred to me that having my massive collection of free t-shirts hanging from something that cost more than my car might be a tad self-indulgent, so I found a nice piece of 1 5/8″ diameter wood, used the complimentary hacksaw, and had at it.  Measure twice!  Cut once!

Victory!  My shirts are now hanging neatly back where they belong, and I have a great story to tell to try and fit in when I hang out at the VFW hall.